Written question WQ83303

The Welsh Government is committed to ensuring there is equity of access to health and care services which are safe, sustainable and deliver the best possible clinical outcomes for communities across all parts of Wales.

In 2020/21, the Welsh Ambulance Services Trust was supported to recruit 136 additional frontline ambulance staff in 2020/21, significantly increasing the number of frontline staff available across the service to respond to incidents more quickly.

The Trust is committed to recruiting a further 127 this year, as part of the ongoing implementation of recommendations from an independent demand and capacity review. The Trust has also begun a roster review to ensure its resources are best placed to meet predicted and future demand. This means that ambulance rosters in Wales will be subject to a review to ensure the right resources are in the right place, at the right time.

I convened an extraordinary meeting of the Emergency Ambulance Services Committee on 20 July, and have set out my expectation for radical and rapid focus on delivery of actions that are known to make a difference to patients. I have asked the Committee to provide me with a clear, time-bound plan which sets out what actions will be delivered and by when to better manage 999 demand in the community, increase capacity, improve responsiveness to people with time sensitive complaints and enables rapid improvement in ambulance patient handover.

In recognition of the challenges of delivering equity of service across all parts of Wales, particularly in rural areas, including Powys, where it is difficult to predict the locality and frequency of demand and road networks can impact on the speed of response, the Welsh Ambulance Service continues to work with local health boards, voluntary and fire and rescue partners.

The Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust and the Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service have been operating a partnership to provide a co-responder service for emergency medical care from the nearest fire station, to some of the most remote areas of Wales, since 1998. The help and support provided by fire co-responders can make a vital difference and we are supportive of the Welsh Ambulance Service’s use of community first responder and fire co-responder teams, where appropriate. All firefighters supporting the co-responder service are provided with the necessary training and equipment to deliver safe and effective care to patients.

The Emergency Ambulance Services Committee (EASC) is working with the Welsh Ambulance Services Trust to support development of a rural ambulance model to reflect the particular challenges of delivering ambulance services in rural areas and develop solutions to improve clinical outcomes and ambulance performance in rural areas and increase the equity of ambulance performance across Wales. Powys is being used as the test bed for the development of this model and a number of immediate actions are being considered to progress this work at pace.

A particular focus for the Welsh Ambulance Service over the winter will be around increasing ambulance clinician capacity in its Clinical Support Desk to help prevent avoidable conveyance and admissions by managing people’s conditions over the phone and directing them to clinically safe alternatives.